you see, I couldn't leave unless they threw me out

...'cause I'd already promised I'd keep an eye on the kids.

My ornate and intricate plans to finally get some fucking sleep last night were easily demolished by Renata's friends. They arrived in twos with their frazzled parents, forcing me to politely answer the door every five minutes while Renata talked about movies and my parents nervously cleaned up the house. It was not a party, it was not an "event," it was not an occasion of any type; Renata had merely decided to invite five friends to sleep over. They rented movies (Uptown Girls, Wimbledon, Hitch, The Notebook, Tuck Everlasting and--R. picked this one--Harold and Maude.) I tried to write poetry at midnight but my chair was an island amidst a sea of blue sleeping bags, and I couldn't block out the noise well enough to do better than this.

They came up with all kinds of games--who could stuff the most mini-marshmallows in their mouth, who could make the gooeyest putty using only the marshmallows and their fingers, who could balance the most of my books on their head--and then decided that it would be fun to stay awake all night. They prepared glasses of cold water for anyone who started to fall asleep and giggled when I told them to watch West Side Story instead of one of their chosen flicks.

They turned the volume up every five minutes, left the lights all on, gossiped loudly, and generally disturbed my peace all night. Once again I got four hours of sleep at most. I woke to the sounds of noise and my mother's extremely physical insistence that I "bond" with her today.

"Bonding" with my mom always entails renting videos that we never agree on, shopping for clothes that we never agree on, or drifting aimlessly through the Strand. We chose the latter and took a Pie-by-the-Pound-break around noon. I left with my customary overflowing bag, and she left with a Mexican cookbook that has a recipe in it for making tacos out of fried grasshoppers and another one for salsa spiced with worms. We stopped at 12th Street Books afterwards and emerged equally victorious, and I spent the next two hours trying to get everything to fit on the shelf in my bedroom. All of my shelves are double-layered now, two rows deep and two rows high on each shelf, and I've started stacking the leftovers on top of the damn thing. Renata insists that I can't touch her pristine side, laden with plasticine figurines and vinyls, even though mom and dad use it to store magazines.

Renata fell asleep as soon as she started reading the book I got her (Martin Gardener's Science Circus, a math book from the '70s) and we stopped talking at her. Dad went somewhere, Mom started reheating steaks, and I ate two-day-old cold noodle salad from Republic over T.S. Eliot.

Notice that I get wordier when I'm bored.
Here. A window into my dull day. Two from yesterday, too, 'cause I'm lazy.


it looks worse in real life


stupid angle makes all my eyebrow-raising efforts useless


dwarf nose in front of the propaganda


the man himself


mom speed-reading and being cute


that shower curtain always freaks me out


had bags under my eyes were big enough for all my textbooks yesterday

Feel enlightened?

Me neither. I need my Nikon, you hobo.


EDIT: just as I hit the "publish" button, the phone rang. Conversation went as follows:

"Hello?"
"Hi, I just called to... Do you know who this is?"
"Uh... Susan?"
"Linda, Samantha's mom. Renata, I hope you haven't..."
"Sorry, I'm Veronica."
"Oh! I'm sorry. I thought you were your sister."
"All good. What were you saying?"
"Well, I just called to tell you that I think the Chinese food Renata and Samantha split yesterday was bad, because Sam's been throwing up all afternoon. You didn't eat any of it, I hope?"
"Uh... thanks for the warning, Linda."
"Any time. Is your mother home?"
"Yeah."

I gave the phone to mom and got up to throw away the empty Chinese food containers. Just what I need. A whole night of projectile vomiting.

I feel like a dark conspiracy is bent on depriving me of sleep.